Hi everyone! This is Top 3D Shop, and in this video, we will tell you about the Flashforge Creator 3 FDM 3D printer.

Despite the fact that this printer is called Creator 3, it has nothing to do with the Creator Pro and Creator 2 models, being fundamentally different from them both in size, design, and capabilities.

The printer is equipped with an array of useful features: two independent extruders, filament runout sensor, semi-automatic bed leveling, touch screen, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, print area lighting, webcam, extruder cleaning system, and others. But first things first.

The outer dimensions of the Creator 3 are 627 x 485 x 615 millimeters. The exterior of the device is lined with gray and black plastic, with a touch-screen and a USB port located on the top of the front panel. There are transparent plastic doors on the front and top sides of the device — when printing with materials prone to shrinkage, such as ABS or nylon, the closed doors retain heat in the chamber. In the case with PLA, the doors can be opened to dissipate the heat and provide consistent part cooling during the print process.

The side covers reveal filament storage compartments. Most spools fit well, but some wider ones and those with narrow holes in the center may be hard to accommodate. But you can always make or even print some kind of external spool holder.

The back panel houses a power cord connector, on/off button, an Ethernet RJ-45 port, and two exhaust fans with HEPA filters. Overall, the machine is tough and heavy, weighing up to 40 kilograms.

Looking inside, the frame is made of thick steel, the whole structure is very rigid. Most of the moving mechanisms are made of aluminum, with a few casted plastic parts. There are no 3D printed elements in the machine.

The axes move on 12 mm rods and high-quality linear bearings, with no play or jamming during the motion. They are homed without the use of limit switches — just by the stepper motor drivers.

The main feature of the Creator 3 is the dual independent direct extruder system. Two extruders can move independently of each other along the X-axis. This opens up such interesting possibilities as printing two identical parts at the same time in Duplicate mode, or printing one model and its mirrored copy in Mirror mode.

The extruders are equipped with all-metal hotends and steel nozzles. They can easily heat up to 300 degrees Celsius, allowing to process a wide range of plastics. The Creator 3 uses proprietary nozzles comprising a nozzle tip set on a long metal tube.

Special metal brush wipers are installed on the right and left sides of the bed to clean the nozzles during printing, with compartments to collect the discarded plastic.

The kinematics of the Creator 3 is similar to MakerBot, but of course it has some differences due to the independent extruders set-up. The print area is quite large at 300 x 250 x 200 millimeters. The hotbed has a removable and slightly flexible cover, making it easy to remove large models from the platform. It is fixed on the bed with several retractable fasteners. The cover surface has a BuildTak coating, providing good adhesion, although in our experience we still had to resort to the use of additional adhesives, such as a glue stick.

The bed can heat up to 120 degrees. Calibration is carried out in semi-automatic mode with touch detection done by piezo sensors built into the extruders. The printer takes measurements at three points with the screen displaying how to adjust the leveling screws.

After the bed leveling, it is necessary to calibrate the extruders relative to each other. Along the Z axis, this happens automatically. Along the X and Y axes, the machine prints longitudinal and transverse lines, and if they do not meet in one line, it is necessary to adjust the space between the extruders. A full calibration procedure takes about 10 minutes.

The printer's control board is based on a 32-bit processor, while the motherboard is equipped with modern, quiet and quality TMC5130A-TA stepper motor drivers.

The proprietary FlashPrint slicer is used to prepare models for printing. It has all the necessary settings controls. In addition to the basic tools like moving, rotating, centering and resizing, there is a very useful function for cutting models into parts with auto fill of the cut geometry. Also, if you load a 3D model with errors into the slicer, FlashPrint will register this and offer automatic correction.

The Set Extruder menu allows you to choose which extruder will be used for printing the selected model, including duplication or mirror modes.

Supports can be placed both automatically, with specified settings, and manually. There are classic linear supports as well as tree-like structures.